as free as you.
Well, why don't you love her?"

"But I do love her, Monsieur Flamaran!"

"Why, then, I congratulate you, my boy!"

He leaned across the table and gave me a hearty grasp of the hand. He was
so agitated that he could not speak--choking with joyful emotion, as if
he had been Jeanne's father, or mine.

After a minute or so, he drew himself up in his chair, reached out, put a
hand on each of my shoulders and kept it there as if he feared I might
fly away.

"So you love her, you love her! Good gracious, what a business I've had
to get you to say so! You are quite right to love her, of course, of
course--I could not have understood your doing otherwise; but I must say
this, my boy, that if you tarry too long, with her attractions, you know
what will happen."

"Yes, I ought to ask for her at once."

"To be sure you ought."

"Alas! Monsieur Flamaran, who is there that I can send on such a mission
for me? You know that I am an orphan."

"But you have an uncle."

"We have quarrelled."

"You might make it up again, on an occasion like this."

"Out of the question; we quarrelled on her account; my uncle hates
Parisiennes."

"Damn it all, then! send a friend--a friend will do under the
circumstances."

"There's Lampron."

"The painter?"

"Yes, but he doesn't know Monsieur Charnot. It would only be one stranger
pleading for another. My chances would be small. What I want--"

"Is a friend of both parties, isn't it? Well, what am I?"

"The very man!"

"Very well. I undertake to ask for her hand! I shall ask for the hand of
the charming Jeanne for both of us; for you, who will make her happy; and
for myself, who will not entirely lose her if she marries one of my
pupils, one of my favorite graduates--my friend, Fabien Mouillard. And I
won't be refused--no, damme, I won't!"

He brought down his fist upon the table with a tremendous blow which made
the glasses ring and the decanters stagger.

"Coming!" cried a waiter from below, thinking he was summoned.

"All right, my good fellow!" shouted M. Flamaran, leaning over the
railings. "Don't trouble. I don't want anything."

He turned again toward me, still filled with emotion, but somewhat calmer
than he had been.

"Now," said he, "let us talk, and do you tell me all."

And we began a long and altogether delightful talk.

A more genuine, a finer fellow never breathed than this professor let
loose from school and giving his heart a holiday--